The APA guide to college teaching

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About the APA Committee on Associate and Baccalaureate Education (CABE) Task Force Members

William S. Altman, PhD, is a professor in the Psychology and Human Services Department at SUNY Broome Community College. He earned PhD and MS degrees in educational psychology and measurement, and an MPS in communication arts from Cornell University, as well as a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania. He studies effective teaching and learning strategies. The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP) honored him with the Wayne Weiten Teaching Excellence Award in 2018.

Altman currently serves as STP’s vice president for resources. He’s been a consulting editor and reviewer for Teaching of Psychology, coordinator of STP programming for the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology (NITOP), co-editor for Excellence in Teaching essay series, a contributor to the Teaching of Psychology Idea Exchange (ToPIX) and has written and edited a number of academic and non-scholarly publications. He also spent over a decade on local radio, was a professional photographer, and performed in theater and as a standup comic (ostensibly to work on classroom presentation skills, but mostly because it's fun).

He’s driven by a wide and unpredictable curiosity, an almost pathological and sometimes annoying need to solve problems of nearly any sort, and a sense that it all ought to be fun.

Megan Sumeracki, PhD, (formerly Smith) is an associate professor at Rhode Island College. She received her master’s in experimental psychology at Washington University in St. Louis and her PhD in cognitive psychology from Purdue University. Sumeracki studies human learning and memory, specifically applying the science of learning in educational contexts. Her research focuses on retrieval-based learning strategies, and the way retrieval can improve meaningful learning. Sumeracki’s work has been published in journals such as Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, and Applied Cognitive Psychology.

Sumeracki has given talks at regional and national conferences in the United States, and abroad, such as a lecture at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study and the keynote at ResearchED in Rugby, England. As a graduate student, Sumeracki served as a committee member and then chair of the APAGS Science Committee. Sumeracki is also passionate about bridging the gap between research and practice in education. In an effort to promote more conversations between researchers and practitioners, she co-founded The Learning Scientistopens in new windowsopens in new window, an informational resource for teachers, students, and parents all over the world.

Clara Cheng, PhD, is a professor of psychology and chair of the undergraduate psychology program at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She teaches courses in statistics and social psychology in flipped and online formats. She also serves as the faculty advisor for the Carlow University chapter of the Psi Chi International Honor Society, which she helped establish in 2013. In addition, Cheng and her mini labradoodle, Mochi, are a certified therapy team and hold regular therapy dog office hours on campus.

A Canadian citizen, Cheng earned her honours BSc (2000) in psychology from the University of Toronto and her MA (2002) and PhD (2006) in social psychology with minors in quantitative psychology and cognitive psychology from The Ohio State University, where she also received the university-wide Graduate Associate Teaching Award and the General Psychology 100 Teaching Excellence Award. In addition, Cheng has a certificate in American sign language from the community college of Allegheny County.

Kelly Bouas Henry, PhD, holds a BA in mathematics and psychology from William Jewell College (1992), and a PhD in social and organizational from University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (1997). She began her career at University of Oklahoma (1997), and joined the faculty at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, Missouri in fall of 1999. While at Missouri Western, Kelly was the founding director of applied learning (2005-10) and the founding co-editor of the Journal of Applied Learning in Higher Education. She has been named a Thomas Ehrlich Faculty Award finalist for her work in applied learning and experiential education. Additionally, Henry has served as a state representative to the Southwestern Psychological Association from 2012-16, at which point she was elected to the president’s council of that organization, serving from 2017-19. She teaches courses in introductory, social, I/O, and health psychology as well as research. Her own scholarship focuses on understanding group dynamics, motivation, and productivity, as well as developing sustainable assessment practices in higher education.

Marianne Fallon, PhD, is the associate vice president for academic affairs—planning and resources and professor of psychological science at Central Connecticut State University. She won the Connecticut State University Trustees Teaching Award in 2010 and has twice been named a finalist for the Central Connecticut State Excellence in Teaching Award. She currently serves as the eastern regional vice-president of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in psychology.

Jay L. Michaels, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of South Florida. He has been an educator for a decade and has prior experience as a college staff tutor. He has continually engaged in developing his teaching skills by attending and presenting at the National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology for four years, completing trainings on advising, online course development, and critical thinking, and has won his university's Teaching Excellence Award and Outstanding Professor Award.

Alicia H. Nordstrom, PhD, is a professor of psychology at Misericordia University. She received her PhD in clinical psychology from The Pennsylvania State University.  Her research focuses on classroom interventions to reduce stereotypes and prejudice, fear of failure and motivation in college students, and factors that promote and hinder students’ adjustment to college.

Nordstrom is the creator of “The Voices Project” and “The Voices Project: Disability” (Electric City/Diamond City Best Theatrical Performance award), a narrative-based, stigma-reduction classroom assignment. “The Voices Project: Mental Health,” was performed at the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival in New York City (#MUVoicesProject) and was broadcast on PBS as a documentary.“The Voices Project” has won several awards for its efficacy in reducing racism and mental health stigma in college students including the Society for the Psychology Study of Social Issues Innovative Teaching Award and the Social Psychology Network Action Teaching Award.

Nordstrom believes in the power of stories to reduce stigma and prejudice, a message that she spread through her TEDxLancaster talk on the “Fallacy of Normal and Beauty of Difference.” She is passionate about teaching, social justice, theater, and making a difference in the lives of others.

Judith Pena-Shaff, PhD, is professor of psychology at Ithaca College where she teaches courses in developmental and educational psychology, psychology and culture, and psychology of privilege and oppression. Her research focuses on connections between human development and learning. Her research has contributed to the:

• Advancement of knowledge through the development of taxonomies to understand learning processes taking place in online asynchronous environments.
• Development of teaching guidelines and class structures that promote learning.
• Advancement of knowledge on infant cognition, with possible therapeutic and academic applications.
• Evaluation of educational programs.

Her goal as a teacher has always been to prepare students to become lifelong learners, independent, critical thinkers, and self-driven problem solvers who excel at working with people of different backgrounds and who can live (and thrive) in an uncertain world. These are crucial skills needed to succeed as individuals and professionals today, whether we are talking about kindergarten, elementary, middle, high school, college students or basically any one. Her focus is how we reach and engage individuals is this process.

Jason Spiegelman, MA, is an associate professor of psychology at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC). He is the chair of the teaching division for the Eastern Psychological Association, and serves on the board of directors for the Association of Faculties for the Advancement of Community College Teaching. He is a regular presenter at conferences dedicated to the teaching of psychology in the United States and abroad, and has an extensive background in the preparation of supplements and ancillaries that accompany textbooks in a variety of social science disciplines.

In 2005 Spiegelman received a distinguished professor award from the Towson University chapter of Psi Chi, and in that same year he was named the Rose Dawson Adjunct Professor of the Year award from Stevenson University. In 2018 he was a member of the OER committee at CCBC, a group that won the Innovation of the Year Award for their work promoting the use of low- and no-cost textbooks across the college.

Spiegelman lives in Pikesville, Maryland with his wife Mitzi and his three sons, Matthew, Eli, and Jonah.

Yana Weinstein-Jones, PhD, received her PhD in psychology from University College London in 2009, worked as a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis until 2013 and then at UMass Lowell as a professor until 2019. Yana co-founded the Learning Scientistsopens in new window, a popular, informational resource for teachers, students, and parents all over the world, and co-authored the book Understanding How We Learn: A Visual Guide (2019). She currently works as a Resource Navigator with Partners in Health on the MA COVID Team, is an editor at the Journal of Cognition, and teaches classes at Boston College and Stony Brook University.